Star-Spangled White Supremacy: Josh Howard and Race in America

Maybe Josh Howard’s remarks can help some of you get to the bottom of race relations in America.

Does he speak on behalf of the entire black community? I say no.

But his remarks about being black and not celebrating The Star-Spangled Banner most definitely relate to the black experience in America.

The first and only event that people bring up is slavery, and, yes, forced labor for a few hundred years would set any community back quite a bit, not to mention the head start it gave whites for those few hundred years.

But what happened after slavery was abolished in the United States?

From the late 1860s until 1900, Reconstruction failed and African Americans continued to be disenfranchised, taken advantage of, and lynched.

The Ku Klux Klan rose to power for the first time as a major terrorist organization. In 1896, the Plessy v. Ferguson decision ruled that separate facilities were equal. Jim Crow segregationist policies continued right up to the Civil Rights Movement that started to gain momentum in the 1950s.

Schooling was and has been unequal, African Americans were barred from homesteading in the western states until the late 1800s, and African American children could not attend public schools until the 1950s.

Later in the 1900s, home loans provided by the Home Owner’s Loan Corporation and the Veteran’s Administration were disproportionately channeled to white families—out of about $120 billion that went to home loans, only a few percent went to non-white families.

Home loans, in addition to the federal funding provided for freeway construction, paved the way for white flight to the suburbs.

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